The ship was being ravaged by the howling northwest gales and the unceasing waves coming across a sandbar known to sailors and Cape Codders as the “graveyard.” Two of her three masts had broken. The crew, unable to steer the boat, watched helplessly as the Montclair was pushed closer to the dangerous sandy shoals of Nauset Beach.

With its cargo of more than 2.5 million wooden laths ripped from the deck and tossed like kindling into the ocean and the Montclair ripping apart, a large wave crashed over the deck sending McLeod and four other men into the raging seas. Two men clung to a lifeline sent to the ship from the beach by U.S. Coast Guard surfmen and were eventually hauled ashore.

More than 90 years later on a frigid December day, I ran my fingers over the cold, soft wood of what remains of the Montclair located several miles south of Nauset Beach in Orleans. Accompanied only by the sounds of the raging Atlantic Ocean and a cold wind, it was easy to imagine what it must have been like for the men on the Montclair. A sunrise run had brought me to the recently unearthed — or is it unsanded? — remains of the three-masted schooner that was torn apart by a gale on March 4, 1927.

Shipwrecks and the power of the Atlantic Ocean have always fascinated me. I’ve visited pieces of shipwrecks in the past along the Outer Cape, but those were usually half-buried in the sand leaving your imagination to visualize the ship.

This one was different. Waves had totally scoured the remains of a huge section of the Montclair. Dozens of large, rusted iron nails poked from the side. I could walk along the floorboards of this section of the ship, the knots protruding from the timbers that were eaten away at both ends. It almost felt like I could push her back into the sea and sail away. For a piece from a nearly-century-old ship, the remains of the Montclair were in remarkable condition.

According to the Cape Cod National Seashore, there have been 5,000 shipwrecks along the 50 mile coastline from Chatham to Provincetown — 1,000 wrecks just between Truro and Wellfleet. The first recorded wreck was the Sparrowhawk in 1626 — its skeleton reappeared on Nauset Beach in 1863 and is now preserved in a museum.

The wreck of the Montclair was described in the iconic Cape Cod book “The Outermost House” by Henry Beston.

“Laths filled the seas,” he wrote, “poured over the men, and formed jagged and fantastic wall along the beach. … A week after the wreck, a man walking the Orleans shore came to a lonely place, and there he saw ahead of him a hand thrust up out of the great sands. Beneath he found the buried body of one of the Montclair’s crew.”

The Boston Globe headlines the next day read: “Five Lost Off Cape Two Survive Wreck. Three-Master Montclair of Nova Scotia Driven Ashore On ‘Graveyard’ Off Orleans And Is Pounded To Pieces By Terrific Surf.”

“This part of Cape Cod once more today proved its title as one of the graveyards of the Atlantic,” wrote reporter James J. Neary in the March 5, 1927, Globe,“when the trim three-master Montclair, hailing from Halifax, N.S., was wrecked in a fearful 60-mile northwest gale, five of her seven crew losing their lives.”

Coast Guard Captain E.L. Clark, a 25-year veteran, was emotional about the loss of life.

“Today was the first time during his service that any lives have been lost here while he has been on the job,” Neary wrote, “and he takes the disaster to heart as though members of his family were concerned. … He signed up for service and had always saved those he went after until today. He shed tears over today’s deaths.”

Finding a shipwreck or buried pirate treasure is something you dream about discovering ever since you were a child on the beach with a pail and shovel. Sometimes you go through a lifetime without finding it. But on this December morning that dream came true.

And like the sand castles you made with that pail and shovel, the Atlantic will eventually take her back and entomb the remains of the Montclair once again into its sandy grave.